Opening statement ...
Brandon Dawson, if you looked at the first five minutes of the game, I think he had eight points and four rebounds, and really didn't do the things we needed him to do to be a successful team, and that was kind of a microcosm of our whole team tonight. I think [Derrick] Nix said it best, to use a phrase from Bill Parcells, you know `We didn't do our job.' We tried to do things, including him, handling the ball on the floor and Russell [Byrd] handling the ball on the floor, and we didn't run and we didn't do the things we've been doing in practice, and we've been doing a great job of it. Some of you guys have been at practices and that was disappointing.

But I think it happens when you play two groups like we did, and the way we played them we did it for a reason. I went in with a scripted rotation. I went in with a scripted set of guys that I wanted to get in, when I wanted to go real small with [Travis] Trice and [Keith] Appling together, which, by the way, wasn't a bad lineup. And then they started a different lineup - their one big kid didn't play - and that probably hurt us instead of helping us because they were 6-7, 6-5, and we have [Adreian] Payne and Nix for the first time together, and we'll probably never run into something like that with two guys that can shoot the ball. All our guards did a pretty good job, but still a lot of work to do.

On playing Rollie Massimino...
Well it was great; I love the guy. He's what's right about college basketball. He's been through it all. He's been to the top. He's battled back. I love guys like that. He loves the game, he loves the sport, and his kids played that way. They played awfully well the first half. It's going to be a good teaching tape for us. It gives us an idea of what we've got to work on and get better at.

On his team's performance...
There were some positives. [Branden] Dawson did look good as far as his knee and his jumping ability and all that. We just didn't run like I want to run; like we've been running in practice.

On Branden Dawson's performance...
He was much better defensively the second half. The poor kid was out [because of his knee injury], but he helped us to that big lead because he made some plays early, and our team played pretty good.

Overall thoughts on his team...
Chemistry was good, but the leadership is going to take some time - I think we're all aware of that. So many guys are playing different positions and it's just going to be a work in progress, but I still like the pieces. I like the parts. I like the athleticism. I like when we did get in a rotation of keeping it a little simpler and not putting guys in there. We'll get them better.

Overall on Travis Trice's performance...
I thought he was one of the bright spots. He ran our team pretty good. He hit some shots. He had some great passes from our inside guys. Him and Keith [Appling] seemed to work pretty well together.

Northwood (Fla.) Head Coach Rollie Massimino

Opening statement ...
First of all I'd like to publicly thank Tom (Izzo), his staff and all of the people here at Michigan State for giving us the opportunity to come. I told him, if we'd have just played one half, we'd be alright. It was a wonderful experience for us, we've been treated extremely well and I really appreciate that. I think Michigan State is going to be a very, very good team. As Tom had indicated in his articles in which he spoke about his team, they were going to run the floor and they really did run the floor. We had trouble defending the transition of Michigan State. I thought we played very, very well the first half. Obviously, they're a very good rebounding team and they only out rebounded us by three the first half. We were looking for positive energy out of our players and I thought for at least 25, 28 minutes we got some very good effort. We used a lot of kids and it was a wonderful experience.

His take on Branden Dawson ...
He shot the ball extremely well, he's very athletic. They played well. I thought our little guy guarded Keith Appling very well, I was impressed. We tried to go and play some zone and Appling made one and (Travis) Trice made two, when we went zone. So that kind of flushed it down. We are a multiple defense kind of basketball team and we didn't have the opportunity to get into our full court situations. Not because we didn't want to, they just pounded the ball down our throats to make it very difficult to get into it. All in all I thought rebounding wise we did a pretty good job. They're big and strong.

On denying transition opportunities ...
I thought we did a very good job the first half. We spent an awful lot of time on transition defense. We kind of pride ourselves, we don't want to give up any more than seven transition baskets in any given period of time. As we tried to get the ball inside it was kind of difficult because of their strength and endurance, running five people in and five people out. I thought we defended their post people pretty good considering what took place. They had 17 turnovers and we had 18. We only had seven the first half. Playing against a team like Michigan State if you have seven in a half, you're playing pretty good. We try to take the positive things out of this and not the negatives. One thing I was disappointed in, they were very aggressive, that's the way Tommy's teams are, certainly more power to them. They really pound the ball at you and we knew that. We exchanged films and had seen that. They're extremely well coached and do a great job. Again, it was fun to be out here.

On the one thing that he really wanted to get out of this game ...
I wanted the kids to see and experience. In the seven years I've been down there, we've played Villanova; we've played Florida when they won the national championship two years in a row, Miami, Maryland last year to a five point game. We played Fordham and we beat Fordham last year, it was almost the same group you saw out there tonight. I think it's great for the kids. It came about because Tom is a friend and he wasn't even hesitant about saying yes. I called him and asked if we could play and he said sure. Those kinds of friends are really important to you in this profession. Now we're going to debark and go down to Lexington, Kentucky and play them. It's fun and I think it's great for us.